Wallflower j-3 Page 10

  Because where there is nothing, Lieutenant, no reason, no incentive, no caring, no human bond, then there is nothing to understand." Dr.

  Chun grinned helplessly. "There's just… nothing."

  And with that the psychiatrist hung his head and stared disconsolately into his empty glass.

  That night, back in New York, the snow was swirling around the streetlamps, almost, it seemed to Janek, like bugs on a summer's night.

  He phoned Aaron from the airport, was surprised to learn that Jess's things were still in her dorm room.

  "The college wants the room back," Aaron told him. "They've been bugging the Dorances to move her stuff out. But Boyce put a seal on the door, then never got around to inspecting it. Course, we already know what a dumb schmuck he is." they met in midtown, rode up to the Columbia campus together, then separated at I 14th Street, Aaron to continue his interviews with the Greg Gale group, Janek to check out Jess's room. The dorm was a modern high rise. A moody female student with badly bitten nails and stringy, unwashed hair manned the lobby security desk alongside a grizzled campus cop. An oddly mismatched pair, they screened visitors and checked student IDs. When Janek told the girl where he was going, she gave him a curious look.

  "Kids've been getting pretty spooked around that room," she muttered.

  While he waited for the elevator, Janek perused the dorm bulletin board.

  It was layered with notices that collectively demonstrated the richness (or perhaps, he thought, the poverty) of American college life: a lecture on Icelandic poetry; a rally for Palestinian rights; a black lesbian tea dance; a plea for information on faculty student sexual harassment, anonymity promised to informants.

  On the twelfth floor he paused before Jess's door. The corridor carried a blend of sounds issuing from adjoining rooms: students talking, laughing; TV shows; heavy metal rock; someone practicing a cello far down the hall. It was the sound of young Americans, and it filled Janek with a bitter pain. A week before, Jess had lived within this sound, had contributed to it. Now her silent room 'spooked" the other kids.

  The room he entered was small, a virtual monk's cell, containing a narrow bed covered with an Indian blanket, a pair of matching bookcases crammed with books, and a clean white Formica desk with a laptop computer centered on its top. A small CD player and a pair of earphones she probably used late at night lay on a little table beside her bed.

  Janek sat down on the bed. He wanted to feel comfortable, but he couldn't. He glanced at the walls, which spoke so strongly of Jess.

  Almost every spare inch was covered with items from her edged weapons collection: fencing foils; rapiers; swords; daggers; knives. It was an odd hobby for a girl, but Jess had clung to it since she was twelve.

  She had fallen in love with the romance of swordplay from the day he had taken her to a repertory movie house to see Jos6 Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac.

  "Thrust home, thrust home…" she had repeated afterward on the street, exuberant as she mimicked Cyrano's elegant lunge. Restless on the bed, Janek moved to the bookcases, then knelt to inspect the titles. There were numerous volumes devoted to fencing and edged weapons and also martial arts, which Jess had taken up when she started college. Janek remembered her words:

  "There's so much crime around there, Frank. All sorts of muggings and stuff. A lot of the kids are scared to walk alone, but I want to learn to take care of myself." He remembered the way she'd tossed her hair when she'd added: "I don't like walking around afraid."

  He sat for a long time on the bed, waiting for something to happen. The walls, the books, swords and knives-he waited for them to speak, to tell him what had frightened her. When they stayed silent, he knew it was time to take the room apart.

  He searched the dresser first. He wept as he touched her clothes: neatly folded pairs of jeans, sweaters, jerseys, shirts, underwear. Her workout clothes moved him most, perhaps, he thought, because they seemed so intimate; within these garments she had moved, run, perspired. He examined everything, turned out every pair of socks, patted down every T-shirt, all to no avail. Aside from a comb, some costume jewelry, a pack of condoms, and miscellaneous coins, he found nothing.

  When he was finished with the dresser, he went to work on the closet, checking the dresses, placing them lovingly on the bed, then exploring the interior of every sneaker and shoe. Behind the shoes he found a set of chromed weights and, inexplicably, a bow and a quiver full of arrows. When he had the closet empty, he stepped into it and peered around. Just above the door he saw a piece of cardboard. It was taped to the wall.

  He hesitated. Behind that cardboard she had hidden something. Did he have the right to intrude? But his role now was not that of A respectful godfather; he was a detective investigating a murder. He reached up and pulled the cardboard free. Several photographs floated to the floor. He stooped to pick them up. they were Polaroids. A series of four shots, they showed Jess and another girl, wearing fencing pantaloons but also unmasked and, mysteriously, bare to the waist, fighting with sabers like duelists.

  At first he couldn't bear to look at them. The exposure of Jess's flesh, the way her pert young breasts were pointed, their tips so eager and erect… he felt obliged to avert his eyes.

  What the hell was going on with her? What the hell did she think she was doing?

  She was playing some weird sort of game, he decided-perhaps some species of charades. Whatever it was it had shamed her or she wouldn't have hidden the pictures. But it had also meant something important to her or she wouldn't have bothered to keep them.

  He wondered who had taken the photographs. Their existence implied an observer. Then he remembered that Polaroid cameras contain self-timers, so the camera could have been mounted on a tripod and set to fire off automatically. What are these pictures about? Do they have anything to do with her call?

  As much as he hated the thought, he knew he had to examine them. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he held them closer, searching their backgrounds for clues. they had been taken in an all-white high-ceilinged room.

  No windows showed, but something about the slant of light made him think the pictures had been taken very early in the day.

  The other girl had pale skin, short jet black hair, and icy blue eyes.

  Who was she? What did she mean to Jess? Why on God's earth are they both bare-breasted? Were they posing, clowning around? Or were they really fighting?

  From the intensity of their expressions they appeared to be duelists. In one shot, in a corner of the room, he could make out their discarded jackets.

  Why were they fighting, risking disfigurement and injury? Were they settling some kind of grudge? Daring each other? Showing bravery? Exciting each other by the ritual of combat? Janek sat at Jess's desk and held his fists to his head. First Greg Gale, now this.

  But the longer he thought about it, the more clearly he understood that Jess was no less enigmatic than other homicide victims he had investigated. So perhaps he shouldn't expect to understand her; perhaps, like every other human being, she would turn out to be unfathomable.

  He took up his search again, combing through her notebooks. He checked her address book for coded telephone numbers. He pulled every book out of her bookcases and fanned its pages for hidden notes.

  He emptied her wastebasket, then searched each scrap for a revealing notation. When, at two in the morning, he finally left the dorm, a new security team was in place at the desk and he had to show his shield to get out.

  He didn't sleep well that night. Images of Jess kept ricocheting in his mind. He recalled Dr. Archer's words:

  "Perhaps you had unconscious fantasies about her. Perhaps you longed for her in some way you don't fully understand. was that true? He had interviewed Jess's lover, handled her underwear, searched out her secret pictures. When he'd found the pack of condoms in her dresser, he'd tossed them casually aside. But inside, he hadn't reacted casually at all. The condoms spoke of sexuality; if she owned them, she used them. And now, as whenever he
thought of her engaging in sex, he felt something he couldn't define: a quick flush of excitement, followed immediately by a hard, harsh throb of despair.

  Had he desired her, and, detesting his desire, immediately repressed it?

  Perhaps Dr. Archer was right; perhaps he had forced his way into this investigation in order to stay close to Jess. was he after her killer, or was he really chasing something inside himself, some perverse aspect of his character he had hitherto denied?

  The question tormented him until, with the dawn, he got out of bed, went to his living room, sat in his easy chair, and stared at Monika's glass.

  Then memories flooded back, memories of their carnal afternoons in room 13 with the sea smell drifung to them from the lagoon. Longing for Monika, her body, and her touch, he knew that Dr. Archer was wrong.

  It was Monika he wanted, not Jess. Feeling confident this was true, he knew he could go on.

  He and Aaron spent the entire first week of November talking to people, then using what they learned to fill in the gfid on their office wall.

  As is usually the case with students, Jess's schedule was rigorously defined. She went to classes, worked out with the fencing team, studied, ate, slept. No one took attendance at Columbia, so there was no hard proof which classes she attended and which she cut, but by putting together the recollections of her friends, they were able to reconstruct a large portion of her final days.

  There were other less typical things she did, and they charted these activities as well: her midmorning therapy sessions with Dr. Archer; her late-afternoon classes in martial arts at a dojo on upper Broadway; her long, lonely early-evening runs through Riverside Park. But still there were gaps, often hours long. And they had no way of knowing what she did at night; students in her dorm came and went as they pleased.

  When Janek met Fran Dunning, he felt a familiar glow. She was the confidante he was looking for.

  Jess's fencing coach, Sergei Simionov, pointed her out in the fencing hall at the Columbia gym. Janek recognized her at once; he had seen her at Jess's funeral and at the cemetery, too.

  "they were teammates and best friends," Simionov said. He was a stout, mustachioed, barrel-chested Soviet 6migr6, a onetime Olympic medalist in saber. "Fran's the one you want to talk to," he said.

  Janek stayed to watch the workout. Women athletes fascinated him.

  He liked their poise, the way they moved, their ease and comfort with their bodies. Fran Dunning, a thin, willowy blonde with pert features and puffed cheeks, moved across the exercise floor with the smooth, liquid mobility of a dancer.

  He waited until the workout was over, then positioned himself outside the women's locker room. When Fran appeared, he introduced himself, then asked if she had time to talk. She was on her way to a biology lab, but she invited him to escort her as she walked across the campus.

  "I know who you are," she said on the steps of the gym. "Jess talked about you a lot. I saw you at the funeral. I wanted to say hi, but you were busy with the Dorances. I didn't want to intrude."

  Janek liked her. She had the same direct look-you-inthe-eyes manner as Jess. Taller, thinner, she carried herself the same way, too, back straight, head high in the confident manner of an athlete.

  "I miss her a lot, still can't believe she's gone. You read about these things, but you never think they can happen to anyone you know."

  "What do you mean by 'these things,' Fran?"

  "Getting attacked, suddenly, for no reason. Running in the park, just enjoying yourself, thinking your thoughts. Then suddenly a man appears out of the dark."

  "Could Jess have known her attacker?"

  "The way I heard it, it was one of those psychos, maybe a mugger gone berserk." Fran stopped walking, looked at him. "Do you think she knew him?" "I don't know yet," Janek said. "Did you see much of her the last few days before it happened?"

  Fran nodded. "The Sunday before. We spent the whole day together." she and Jess saw each other daily at fencing practice and also spent time together on weekends. That particular Sunday was the last day of the Custom Knives Show, so they joined up in the morning, took the subway down to Grand Central, then walked over to the Hotel Roosevelt, where the show was being held.

  "Jess got me started with knives. She had this great collection, mostly historical pieces, Italian stilettos, a couple of Japanese tantos, an Indonesian kris, a tertffic French rapier. When I saw her stuff, I knew I wanted to collect, too. She was very generous with advice, and she steered me to the good dealers. That's how we became friends. On the fencing team we were rivals. We kidded each other about one of us switching to saber so we wouldn't have to compete. The joke, of course, was that neither of us was willing to switch."

  American-made custom knives were Jess's most recent passion. And as with the historical daggers and swords, she was the one who took the lead, learning to differentiate the work of the leading makers, then introducing Fran Dunning to the field.

  "The knives some of those men make are remarkable," Fran said. "They're like art objects, but still, you can use them. Hunting knives, bowies, fighting knivesJess thought knifemaking was one of the few crafts at which Americans excel."

  The knife show was held on the mezzanine floor of the hotel. The main room was a large hall, filled with long exhibition tables arranged along aisles, occupied by hundreds of knifemakers from all over the country who had brought their wares to sell. At first Jess and Fran explored together; then they split up so each girl could look at the knives that most interested her. When Fran rejoined Jess, she sensed her friend was upset.

  "I asked her if something was the matter," Fran told Janek as they crossed in front of Butler Library. "She shook her head, said it wasn't anything. I went along. What else could I do? But I didn't believe her. As I'm sure you know, Jess was not a moody type of girl. But something must have gotten to her because she started out so exuberant, but when we met up at the door, she was downcast, almost sullen." "What did you do after the show?"

  "Took the subway uptown, worked out for an hour with foils in the gym, then showered and went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant on Broadway and a Hundred and Nineteenth. "

  "Anything unusual happen?"

  "Nothing I can think of."

  "Did either of you buy a knife?"

  Fran nodded. "Jess did. A real beauty, a switchblade with an ivory handle. It wasn't legal. The man who made it was very cautious about showing it to us." She smiled. "Jess told me you'd give her hell if you ever found out she bought it." A switchblade-why on earth?

  "I didn't find it when I searched her dorm room," Janek said.

  "Maybe she dropped it off at her mother's. If I knew Jess, she probably hid it someplace."

  Janck thought about hiding places. "Something I want to ask you."

  Fran peered at him. "I'll help you as best I can."

  "First, close your eyes." Fran obeyed. "Now think of two women fencing. Imagine them topless, both of them." "Uh-huh…

  "Think about it. Does the image remind you of anything?"

  Fran shook her head. But Janek felt something tentative in her denial.

  "Does it embarrass you?"

  Fran blushed. "It is kind of wild."

  She's not a very good liar, Janek thought.

  "I found photos of Jess and another girl fencing like that. they were hidden in Jess's closet."

  He stared at Fran, waiting for her to respond. When she looked away, he stopped walking and gently touched her cheek.

  "Please understand," he said. "I need to know everything."

  "Yeah…" Fran took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was agitated and her delivery faster than before.

  "There's a painting by a French artist, t,mile Bayard. It's called An Affair of Honor. Jess found it in one of her books about dueling. It shows two topless women fighting with rapiers while three other women look on. Jess was intrigued by it-I don't know why. She was equally intrigued by a whole slew of stories she dug up on women duelists. Sh
e told me she wanted to write a paper about them for some feminist-oriented European history course she was taking."

  "But there's more to it, isn't there, Fran? Did she ask you to fence topless with her?" Fran nodded. "I didn't want to. For one thing it's dangerous. For another… I just didn't like the idea. So I told her: 'I'm a jock, but I'm not that hutch.' I think she understood."

  "Did you take her proposal as a sexual overture?"

  Fran shook her head. "If Jess was inclined that way, she never showed it. No, I think it was just something she wanted to do.

  Fencing, fighting-those were things she loved. In some way, I guess, the image turned her on. And once she got it into her head, she wanted to act it out. Janek showed Fran the Polaroids. Fran could not identify the other girl, nor did she recognize the room where the pictures had been taken.

  "I wonder if it's a fencing, salon at the Ruspoli Academy in Italy. Fran was there last summer. It's certainly not any practice room we use around here."

  "A final question," Janek said. "Did Jess do or say anything that Sunday, anything at all, that made you think she might be afraid."

  Fran shook her head. "I don't think Jess was afraid of anything.

  That's why she was such a terrific fencer. I remember something she said to me once: 'I'll take life any way it comes.' I think if she saw someone running toward her with an ice pick, she'd have put up a terrific fight. She knew karate. She could disarm a man twice her weight. So whoever killed her must have come at her from behind, and the only reason she didn't hear him coming was that she had her Walkman turned up at the time."

  Aaron's interviews convinced him that none of the members of the Greg Gale crowd had harbored any ill will toward Jess.

  "They're not murderous types, Frank. Just your standard spoiled, overeducated, decadent, attractive young people with a hunger for dope and thrills. Actually they don't do that much drugs. Mostly pot, occasionally a little coke. to them the sex group's good clean fun, not a cult they'd kill to protect."